Have Malaysian TikTok influencers become the new cybertroopers? Here’s proof

Hey, hey, people. Some of y’all might’ve seen videos of influencers on various social media platforms talking about GE15 recently, like this one:

https://twitter.com/JustinTWJ/status/1592958946494787584?s=20&t=DMjzb0BXMAzh56kbRWhzMg

In case, you don’t want to or can’t watch the video, it’s just an influencer showing support for their political party of choice. Nothing unusual at first glance, until you find out…

Certain influencers might’ve been paid off by parti politik

User JustinTWJ pointed out a few interesting signs pointing to the fact that these influencers might have been hired to “promote” various political parties, and we reached out to ask him if we could cover his findings. He said yes, so… the first one is this:

These are two different influencers, yet they have the exact same captions and hashtags (in the same order, no less) for their videos.

Different captions here, but again, same hashtags in the same order.

Pandai buat duit. Tapi boleh ke undi dua2 sekali? hahaha. pic.twitter.com/I5Vms8IGN7

— Hafiz Osman (@heyyhafiz) November 15, 2022

Yang ni best, one influencer promoting two parties at the same time.

And I saved the best for last.

Someone from the BN influencer marketing team fucked up the script 😂😂😂

“Dah 5 tahun kita kena tipu”

BROOOO PH was in power for less than 2 years only. Nice try. pic.twitter.com/9vofubOzwx

— not typical. (@JustinTWJ) November 16, 2022

But as JustinTWJ put it so eloquently, we saved the best ones for last: a couple of the BN-supporting influencers had identical scripts for their videos, and two of them even said “dah 5 tahun kita kena tipu” despite the previous government only being in power for less than two years.

Then again, y’all might be thinking right now, “ARE THEY REALLY PAID MEH? MAYBE COINCIDENCE ONLY”, and well…

No, there’s no conclusive proof they’ve been paid to do content

Yeah, yeah, we got the info from a Twitter thread as opposed to more credible sources, but after what we’ve seen, it’s hard not to wonder how many of the influencers are doing this out of the pockets of political parties.

If y’all wanna do some digging yourself, we previously got some tips from Miaoling Ng, a media policy activist and former Media Strengthening Officer at the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), to see if the info checks out:

• Credibility of the source – Where did the information come from?
• Credibility of the witness – Who is the witness to the incident (if any)?
• Details of the information provided by the witness – What kind of information does the witness have?
• Corroborating evidence(s) – Did any other credible sources verify the information?

Are these influencers actually cybertroopers, though? Miaoling defined the term as:

“…actors acting on behalf of the government or political parties to manipulate public opinion online…” – Miaoling, in an interview with CILISOS

So… IF the influencers were paid by political parties to do all this shiz, yeah, they’d be cybertroopers. And at the end of the day, what we’re trying to say is this: don’t blindly believe everything you see on social media, whether it comes to deciding on who to vote for, what products to buy, or even which songs to listen to. Blech.

P.S.: Don’t lah kecam the influencers. There’s enough toxicity going around online.